Head of Agriculture — Middle East (CIO-level mandate)

Position overview

Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Agriculture & AgriTech on a senior CIO leadership mandate anchored in Middle East. The remit explicitly spans Malaysia, India, USA.

This is a sector or practice-head mandate combining deep domain credibility with commercial ownership of a vertical P&L or global practice line.

The organisation is looking for pattern recognition: someone who has seen similar complexity before and knows which levers matter first.

Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: FPO and cooperative leadership — as the government promotes Farmer Producer Organisations, finding leaders who can manage democratic, community-owned agricultural businesses
• Geographic spine: Primary hub Middle East with explicit corridor responsibility across Malaysia, India, USA.
• Organisation stage: Customer concentration in a handful of strategic accounts shapes both opportunity and reputational risk.
• Stakeholders: Key interfaces include headquarters strategy, regional risk and legal, local regulators (where material), and anchor channel partners.
• Secondary lens: Climate adaptation leadership — as weather patterns become more volatile, finding agricultural leaders who can build climate-resilient farming systems and products

The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Identity & access: Clean up excessive privileges and stale accounts — foundational for both security and audit.
2. End-user support: Reduce ticket backlog through root-cause fixes, not perpetual firefighting.
3. Asset lifecycle: Refresh hardware and end-of-life software on a predictable cadence.
4. Business continuity: Tabletop exercises that surface real gaps in dependencies and communications.
5. Innovation intake: Lightweight process for business-led experiments that don’t bypass architecture guardrails.
6. Vendor concentration: Mitigate single-supplier risk for critical platforms.

Responsibilities (representative)

• Improve IT demand management and portfolio governance with the executive committee.
• Upgrade vendor management — SLAs, penalties, and outcome-based contracts.
• Sponsor integration discipline post-M&A for systems and data.
• Build IT financial transparency — chargeback or showback where helpful.
• Develop IT leadership team with mix of supplier management and internal delivery strength.

Leadership profile

• Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
• Service leadership: IT organisation trusted for reliability, cost transparency, and partnership.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Middle East with regular engagement across Malaysia, India.

Team & culture

Inclusion and psychological safety are not separate programmes — they are prerequisites for honest debate on strategy and risk. Model curiosity, direct feedback, and consequences for conduct lapses.

Success measures (examples)

• Financial: Revenue and margin vs. plan; cash conversion; capital efficiency.
• Strategic: Share in priority segments; customer retention in anchor accounts; milestone delivery on transformation.
• People: Engagement trends; regrettable attrition in critical roles; diversity of succession slate.
• Risk: Audit and regulatory outcomes; conduct events; operational resilience metrics.

First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Shadow key customer journeys or operations — paper over slides where reality diverges.
• Days 30–60: Cut or pause low-value projects freeing capacity for strategic work.
• Days 60–90: Publish first integrated forecast or plan under your ownership — even if directional.
• Build trust with risk, legal, and audit through transparency — surprises erode licence to move fast.
• Pick one cultural signal (e.g. meeting hygiene, promotion criteria) and model it relentlessly.

Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: Matrix of global product houses and local P&L; tension is normal — your role is to broker trade-offs with data.
• External: Customers who influence reference deals; government or industry bodies in regulated sectors.
• Capital providers: Banks, sponsors, or minority investors — each needs a slightly different narrative on risk.

Travel & mobility

Multi-hub rhythm — plan for weekly or bi-weekly cross-border travel during integration or transformation peaks.

Compensation

Competitive CIO compensation for Agriculture & AgriTech leadership: cash, incentive, benefits, and potential equity or carry (case-dependent). Discussed with finalists only.

Application status

This mandate is no longer accepting new applications. The search progressed through Q4 2025 and closed for submissions in February 2026. We retain this posting for transparency on the type of leadership work we carry in Agriculture & AgriTech and Middle East. For similar active mandates, browse open roles or submit a general profile through executive search inquiry.

Reference: agriculture-agritech · CIO · Middle East · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors